Ok so I don't work in banking and never will, so this is just an outsider's point of view. I feel all you monkeys feeling trapped in IB, shit seems terrible and it takes a true soldier to endure what you guys are going through. However, something that has been repeatedly brought up is that reform is hard because there so many money/prestige hungry college kids that would happily take your place, so banks aren't exactly on the hot seat when it comes to making juniors' lives easier. But there is one fundamental problem that I see if true, true reforms actually happen (which I still think is more unlikely than not). If banks did indeed move to 60-80 work weeks max, we actually got back in the office, vacation requirements, protected weekends, basically just better w/l balance in general, wouldn't it become damn near impossible to get into banking? I mean it's already one of the most competitive fields out of undergrad there is, and that's considering how shitty conditions are and have been for years. So if banking did somehow transform into a job where you could earn six figures out of undergrad and work slightly harder than everyone else, wouldn't every college kid and their mother be jumping the gun to apply to every bank in existence? I feel that right now that's the one thing that's keeping banking from becoming literally the most popular field there is out of undergrad. I mean you know how many undergrads would pursue banking if their average work week was 60 as opposed to 90 and they got the same or even a little less in comp? A fuckton. The only other thing that would damper this potential influx is if salaries also decreased, which I feel could be possible if banks paid less per head so they could hire more since they can't work analysts 120 hours anymore. There's so much that goes into this, it's all so variable and fluid. But once again, I feel for you guys in IB and hope everything turns out ok whether or not you decide to stick it out or pursue something else. What are everyone's thoughts on this? Would acceptance rates plummet if we saw banking reform? How likely even is banking reform? Does the recent and incoming of analysts mean change is coming?
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Would comp be a little less tho, I feel like it would drop significantly. There's no perfect job, especially out of undergrad. Every career has its tradeoffs.
That's the thing. Let's say you made it so on average an analyst was 60 hours a week for 80-100k total vs. 80 hours for 130-150k. There would be so many kids who would previously have just gone for like accounting that would be making like 40-50k for almost the same workload (50-60 hours). And it's not like these kids are stupid either. There are many who just pursue something way less stressful just because they want to, not because they can't get into banking. So I feel like even then the competition would skyrocket
The issue is this doesn’t really jive with the current staffing model. Hiring more people doesn’t fully resolve the hours issue, for sure would help a bit though. Could analysts be staffed on 2-3 projects instead of 4-5? Yes. But then there would be pockets of time when analysts are doing nothing which companies view as inefficient. If you had visibility to know that Project A and Project B would be busy Week 1 and not Week 2 but Project C is busy Week 2, you’d just cross staff A/C or B/C. The issues arise in the inability to predict that and an analyst is cross staffed across A/B. Agree something needs to change. Don’t think it’s as simple as increasing headcount and cutting pay a bit... think everyone would be OK with that happening if it would solve things.
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